Shabbat mornings
Join us for our Shacharit service on Saturday mornings at 1030 – hear the week’s Torah reading, a sermon by the Rabbi or a guest speaker, sometimes a discussion, and have the opportunity to pray and sing with the community. Our services are informal, inclusive, participative and meaningful.
Torah Tots
Come and celebrate Shabbat with our under-6s – we’ll be singing, dancing, telling stories and making things every fortnight on Saturday mornings – once a month on Zoom at 1030 & once a month in person at 1115 joining the rest of the community for Kiddush. When there isn’t a Torah Tots, we put out toys and colouring at the back of the hall and young children are always welcome to chill out there!
Intergenerational Service
Once a term we have a family-friendly service for the whole community where our kids take the lead and we do singing, drumming, sharing and Bibliodrama to engage children, young people and the young at heart!
Shabbat Chadasha
An alternative service every couple of months with poetry, new music, and a discussion instead of a sermon. We uncover the service structure to discover the spirituality held within.
Themed services
We hold special services, often with a guest speaker, for Mental Health Shabbat, Pride Shabbat, Remembrance Shabbat, Interfaith Shabbat, Green Shabbat and Human Rights Shabbat among others.
Friday nights
Finish the week with our monthly Friday events:
Kabbalat Shabbat on Zoom
Areflective evening service where we share our weeks, reflect and sing together. Contact admin@kolchai.org for the link.
Friday Night Supper Club
Kiddush, singing and a great Friday Night Dinner. Please book in advance.
Festivals
We celebrate all the festivals in our informal, inclusive KC style whether at our community seder, creative Tikkun Leil Shavuot, Sushi in the Sukkah, musical Simchat Torah, Chanukah candle-lighting and Purim party – to mention a few.
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur take place in our marquee on site, here at Hatch End, with family services inside our building, study sessions, new liturgy and a parallel alternative service on Yom Kippur morning . Our choir, which sings occasionally on Shabbat mornings, leads us through. You can book in as guests if you want to try us out!
Come in person to Kol Chai, 434, Uxbridge Road HA5 4RG (no need to book) or join us on Zoom – contact admin@kolchai.org for the link.
Click a button for the online prayer books
Our Czech Scroll
At Kol Chai we are very proud of our Czech Memorial Scroll. It was collected from a town called Roudnice and Lebem, or in German, Raudnitz an der Elbe, a small town. The first synagogue there was built in 1619 and the first rabbi arrived in 1650.
Most 17th century Jews traded in grain and wine, raised cattle or worked as artisans and peddlers. About a third succumbed to the plague in 1713 and many were murdered after the expulsion from Prague in 1744. A public Jewish religious school with two classes was founded in Roudnice in 1841, but Jews began moving to larger towns in the late 19th century. By 1910, there were 9,249 people in Roudnice, of whom 320 were Jews.
After the Nazi invasion, Czech Jewish life was severely restricted. They could be fined for crossing a forbidden street, buying fruit or violated the shopping hours fixed for Jews. In 1941, the synagogue in Roudnice was closed. Transports to nearby Terezin began in November 1941 and in February 1942, the Jews of Roudnice were rounded up.
Our scroll is our link to the Jews of Roudnice, their assurance that they will not be forgotten. Every time we use our Czech scroll, we renew that link with the past. May their memory be for a blessing, for we carry with us their memorial. We are enriched by their history.
